center – Dancing In The Kingdom

The Discipline of Simplicity/Stewardship

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Discipline of Simplicity/Stewardship

[Bible references: Genesis 1:28; Psalm 33:5; Micah 6:8; Hosea 6:6; Matthew 25:35-40; Luke 16:13; John 13:34; 1 Corinthians 3:9; 4:2; 9:24-27; 2 Corinthians 1:12; 9:6-8; Galatians 6:6; Philippians 4: 4,8-13; 1 Timothy 5:8; 6:6-10, 17-19; Hebrews 3:5; 12:1-3; James 1:17; 1 Peter 4:10; 1 John 3:17]

The central point for the Discipline of simplicity is to seek the kingdom of God and the righteousness of His kingdom first – and then everything necessary will come in its proper order.^{^[1]}

There’s no point in simplifying your life if you are steering toward an end point that doesn’t matter to begin with.^{^[2]}

My schedule is far less about what I want to get done and far more about who I want to become.^{^[3]}

“We do not mean . . . that simplicity betrays itself in no visible signs, has not its own habits, its distinguishing tastes and ways; but this outward show, which may now and then be counterfeited, must not be confounded with its essence and its deep and wholly inward source. Simplicity is a state of mind. It dwells in the main intention of our lives. A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be . . . And this is neither so easy nor so impossible as one might think. At bottom, it consists in putting our acts and aspirations in accordance with the law of our being, and consequently with the Eternal Intention which willed that we should be at all.”^{^[4]}

“If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for.”^{^[5]}

It is not enough to simply pare down one’s possessions or schedule, because they can become their own ends or become undone because we have not dealt with our habit of filling our time or possessions with something else. To successfully practice simplicity, we must have a clear center, a clear purpose. It is from that purpose that we can decide how to spend our time and resources so that our decisions can be based on how they fit our priorities. An indicator of whether you achieved your purpose can be if you feel fragmented and restless. Without a clear purpose, short-term distractions and pleasures can hijack our progress towards our long-term goals. Therefore, the goal of simplicity is to gain integrity of spirit, reduce temptations, distractions, and the need/desire for things so that we can better serve God.

Setting our priorities

To reach these goals, we must do less of some things but more of others. True simplicity is doing less of what matters least, and more of what matters most. You don’t just empty your life of the bad, you fill it with the good. Having a purpose allows you to discern whether a particular area of life should be constricted or expanded; purpose produces priorities. Once our priorities are set then we can make meaningful decisions about our activities. We may need to declutter our lives: we may have too many things in our home, or too many activities in our lives. What detracts our attention from our priorities? What things should we say “no” to? What habits do we have that move us from our goals?

The discipline of simplicity includes determining who we want to be and setting goals to achieve that, then setting our priorities, and then arranging our use of time, money, our spiritual gifts, and our relationships to meet those priorities. Simplicity is the essence of stewardship.

Stewarding our resources

Once we have centered ourselves and established our priorities then we can focus on how to manage the limited resources that we must accomplish the responsibilities God has given us. It is easy to get overwhelmed by all the needs we see around us in the world, it seems that there are not enough resources to meet the needs of the world. That is why we need to figure out what responsibilities God has to us individually. Then we need to trust God to provide what we need to for those responsibilities (Philippians 4:19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.)

If we have set our priorities properly, then our priorities should be aligned with God’s priorities and desires. In Gen 1:28, we can see that stewardship is the first assignment God gave humans, so part of what we need to consider is what individual things that we, as individuals, have been given stewardship responsibilities over. We also need to consider God’s desires for how we carry out those responsibilities. We know that His desires are for us to love God and neighbor, act with justice and mercy, have a generous and overflowing love towards others (including our families, our fellow believers, and those in need) and to take care of the world he has provided for us.

As His stewards, we need to consider how to use the blessings God had given us, to serve in the way he would have us do so that we bring glory to Him in all that we do. We are not just a person with a vocation, or just a member of a family, or just a church member, etc. We are a who not a what. We are people created by God to be in relation with him and with others, and with multiple obligations.

^[2] Hybels, Bill. Simplify: Ten Practices to Unclutter Your Soul. Tyndale Momentum 2015

^[3] Hybels, Bill. Simplify: Ten Practices to Unclutter Your Soul. Tyndale Momentum 2015

^[4] Wagner, Charles. The Simple Life. McClure, Phillips & Co. 1901

^[5] Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 1999

Reflect

What habits in your life move you away from pursuing God?

Observe

Read 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. How would following the advice in this passage help us to be better stewards?

Reforming our loves

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 3 – Dancing in the Kingdom– Chapter 15 – Reforming our Souls

Reforming our Loves

[Bible references: Psalm 1; 42; 139:13-14; Proverbs 4:23; Matthew 5:3-12; 12:28; 13:1-22; Mark 4:11; 12:29-31; Luke 8:10, 10:8; 13:18-19; Ephesians 6:10-20; Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Peter 5:8-9]

We are shaped every day, whether we know it or not, by practices – rituals and liturgies that make us who we are. We receive these practices – which are often rote – not only from the church or the Scriptures but from our culture, from the “air around us.”^{^[1]}

The Hebrew word for “hear,” “shema,” implies not just hearing, but obedience. Hearing with our mind should be connected to obeying with our body. God has made us with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Descartes had said, “I think therefore I am,” but that, in and of itself, leaves out the totality of who we are. We are not just brains on a stick,^[2] we are creatures with embodied souls, creatures made in the image of a loving God, whose love is not just expressed in a sentiment, but by everyday choices expressed in what He does and in what we do. 1 Corinthians 13 makes clear that nothing is worthwhile if there is not love expressed through our actions.

Unfortunately, as we have expressed in a previous chapter, our choices seem to always be shrouded in sinful behavior. Time after time, history has shown us that simply filling our mind with the truth of God is a good start but is not sufficient to prevent us doing wrong things. Although our love will not be perfect until we are completely transformed during our resurrection, that does not leave us with no means to order our loves in our current lives. For the time that we are in, God has provided us with various disciplines which can be used to train our habits and therefore train our loves.

Our hope is not just in the future. Jesus proclaimed two thousand years ago that the kingdom of God has come. Jesus’ work of restoration may not be completed but is already underway. We may sometimes fret that the work of restoration, within us and around us, does not happen quickly, but as we observe God’s character as manifested in the natural and spiritual world around us, God seems to relentlessly accomplish his work through processes of growth. God had specified that all birds of the air, fish of the sea, animals and even humans were, through normal processes, to multiply and fill the earth. God’s own plan of redemption worked through generations from Adam, through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and finally to Christ. Jesus even particularly specified that the kingdom of God is like a seed that over time will grow into a plant or tree.

As creatures made in the image of God, we are given the free will to participate in our own growth. But we should keep in mind that if our goal is to become more like Jesus, then we should expect that growing into the likeness of Christ will take time … will take normal processes of growth. But we also need to keep in mind that God’s work of restoration is not unopposed; there are spiritual forces at work against God and against us.

Ultimately, it is Christ who transforms us. But we can humbly submit ourselves to God and prepare the soil of our lives to receive His grace. Our growth will be impacted by our loves and desires, by our yearnings, hungering and thirsting,^[3] by where we choose to feed ourselves, by the habits and liturgies we allow to shape our lives,^[4] by the disciplines we submit to,^[5] by how we center our lives,^[6] by how we have integrated the love we have toward ourselves, our families, our communities, and God. In the meanwhile, we will face resistance from within and from outside ourselves. In the normal course of events, it will be a common experience to have times when God seems absent, but we must know how to stay the course.

Holding to our center, keeping our loves ordered, holding on to our identity in the face of the pressures of the world will take conscious effort and discipline. Of course, our discipleship is not just a matter of paying attention to our inner life but also in the expression of our inner life in our walk with others, inside and outside the church. Hopefully, within the church, we can find healthy mutual support as we share our complementary spiritual gifts with one another.

Spiritual Disciplines are those practices which keep us centered on Christ. There are books with various lists of spiritual disciplines available to help guide us and you will find them with slightly different approaches. For instance, in Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline,^[7] the disciplines are divided into three categories: The inward disciplines (meditation, prayer, fasting, study), the outward disciplines (simplicity, solitude, submission, service) and the corporate disciplines (confession, worship, guidance, celebration).

Another approach to spiritual disciplines is to focus on deliberative lifestyles such as were originally developed for use in monasteries but have application in the everyday lifestyle. One such example is the Rule of St. Benedict.^[8] The Rule reminds us that we do not need to go about looking for God, for He is everywhere, including right where you are in your time and your place, in the humdrum everyday tasks of life. Freedom in Christ is achieved through the submission to three vows: obedience, stability and conversatio morum (conversion of life). These vows present us with paradoxes: our need to be in the desert so that we can be more fully present in the marketplace, our need to have prayer alone so that we can be more present in common worship, our need to commit ourselves to stability so that we can be more fully open to change, our need to detach ourselves from things so that we can fully enjoy them. The intent of all these practices is to help us more fully center ourselves in Christ so that we can more fully love our community.

Whether we are following an intentional plan or not, our everyday habits and practices do shape our spiritual lives. Even the normal, incidental routines we do, such as brushing our teeth, can shape us in ways we don’t think about. But if we take the time, we have the opportunity of using those same routines to help transform us in the ways we want to. But if we want to give our everyday routines a chance to transform us in the way we want, we will need to practice ways of waiting, hoping, slowing down, and preparing.

“When I brush my teeth I am pushing back, in the smallest of ways, the death and chaos that will inevitably overtake my body. I am dust polishing dust. And yet I am not only dust. When God formed people from the dust, he breathed into us—through our lips and teeth—his very breath. So I will fight against my body’s fallenness. I will care for it as best I can, knowing that my body is sacred and that caring for it (and for the other bodies around me) is a holy act. I’ll hold on to the truth that my body, in all its brokenness, is beloved, and that one day it will be, like the resurrected body of Christ, glorious. Brushing my teeth, therefore, is a nonverbal prayer, an act of worship that claims the hope to come.” ^{^[9]}

We need to be mindful that changes in our life are never neutral. We need to be intentional about choosing practices and patterns in our life that will transform us to be more in the image of Christ.

“Take heed, consider your temptations, watch diligently; there is a treachery, a deceit in sin that tends to the hardening of your hearts from the fear of God.” ^{^[10]}

We need to be aware of how much our sin is actively working against us, hardening our hearts, and turning us in ways, even very subtle ways, against Christ. To be diligent in following Christ, we need to be diligent in practicing spiritual disciplines in one form or another.

^[1] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred practices in everyday life.” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[2] Smith, K.A. James “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

^[3] Smith, K.A. James. “You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit” Brazos Press 2016. eBook

^[4] Warren, Tish Harrison. “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life” InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[6] De Waal, Esther. Seeking God The Liturgical Press. 2001; Tozer, A.W. “The Pursuit of God” Christian Publications, Inc. 1948

^[9] Warren, Tish Harrison. Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. InterVarsity Press 2016. eBook

^[10] Owen, John. Mortification of Sin. In Believers The Necessity, Nature, And Means Of It: With A Resolution Of Sundry Cases Of Conscience Thereunto Belonging.” From The Works of John Owen Johnstone & Hunter Volume 6, 1850-3 www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/owen/Mortification%20of%20Sin%20-%20John%20Owen.pdf

Observe

Read Psalm 1; Matthew 13:1-22. How do you prepare the soil of your heart so that you can spiritually flourish?

Interlude

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

Interlude

[Bible references: Psalm 19]

As I was working one warm summer night at a convenience store with the door open, it was not unexpected to see a moth fly in through the door. Normally, moths are attracted to light sources, but this time the moth was attracted to the white top of a garbage container. The moth was distracted by the light reflected off the garbage container. That describes a lot of human behavior; we get distracted by the pretty garbage.

Since the time of Adam and Eve we’ve had the temptation to place ourselves at the center of the universe, dismissing the idea that we did not create the natural beauty of the world around us but that we can possess and control it ourselves, that we are the masters of all we see. We are tempted to dismiss the reality that we are part of a universe we did not create with the idea that we can define the universe which we think revolves around us.

In the meantime, there is a story that began long ago when God brought into being creatures made in his image, a story about his plans for those creatures, plans for them to fill the earth and making the whole earth a place of love and goodness, but a place where that love and goodness would be disrupted by our rebellion. Fortunately, that disruption did not deter God from continuing his plans for his image-bearing creatures and that story is still in the making. That story is now our story.

What can get confused is that this story is contained in the Bible which is often presented as a disconnected story. The Old and New Testaments of the Bible can seem disconnected because of the cultural barriers between us and the testaments. Some people even think the God described in the Old Testament is different from the God in the New Testament.

That disconnect is exasperated by the long and messy history of the church. The church seems very divided on how to interpret those writings and how to live into them, leaving us with a confusion of various interpretations and practices that seem to contradict one another. How is one supposed to make sense of it all?

However, it is possible to obtain a clearer understanding of how both Testaments make one cohesive story, a story into which we can fit. When we see how the unified story than runs from Creation to Revelation, we can then see how we, as part of God’s church, are intended to participate in that story. God did not need to create us or the universe, He did it out of a desire to share his love and delight. God’s creation was more an act of play than of work and He desires that we actively play with him, if you will, to dance with him in His Kingdom.

The Kingdom Dance is not meant to be a solo effort, we are to dance with God and with his people. To that end, while this book can simply be read as a solo exercise, there are additional ways to engage with the material.

Biblical references are provided extensively through the book. They are there to support the text. If you read them, particularly the shorter passages, take the time to slow down and let God the Spirit speak to you. The Bible has been described as ancient Jewish Meditation Literature.^[1] It is best read when you give yourself time to absorb it.
There are extensive footnotes throughout the book. Whenever possible, I have provided hyperlinks to online materials to make the additional materials easily available to you. If you spend time investigating the footnotes, you will notice that I am not drawing from only one Christian tradition, but from a variety of them, allowing the richness of the different traditions to form a more complete story. To form a more complete story I also, particularly in the beginning, will use materials from the “Second Book of God” that is, book of Creation.[2]

“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”[3]

For those who are not practiced in studying the Bible, Appendix A gives a summary of techniques that could be used to help understand scripture. This may prove useful for understanding when you study the Biblical references given throughout this book.
Reading the material with a group can make the most impact. There are questions at the end of each chapter that ask you to reflect on the material and then read related biblical passages to think more deeply about various issues. These exercises and questions will help you engage with the material by first asking you to think about how each section applies to your life and secondly to share your thoughts with others in the group so that together you can more thoughtfully “Enter the Dance” with God, with all the others that have come before, with those that are coming now and with that will continue to come until Heaven and Earth are reunited.
Finally, the best participation will be not to just read and reflect, but to dance the Kingdom dance with God. Part 3 of this book will suggest ways to take part in his activity in bringing healing to the world he loves, broken now but to be finally and fully restored when He rejoins heaven and earth.

The Bible is a complex collection of literature, using many literary styles and techniques and it can be difficult to understand some parts, particularly when one part seems to contradict another. I have found a useful principal in studying the Bible which I call “Conflicts are Clues” which says that any apparent conflict or confusion in Scripture should be handled as clues to look further instead of thinking that the conflicts create contradictions which reduce the integrity of the Bible.

In our age, many regard science and theology to be in conflict. In years past, however, the issue was not about conflict but about which discipline rules over or undergirds all the other disciplines. These ideas were expressed in ways such as “theology is the queen of all sciences,” “math is the queen of all sciences,” “philosophy is the queen of all sciences,” “philosophy is the handmaid of all sciences.”

The biblical perspective is that God speaks to us both through two books, the book of Creation and the Bible. Theology’s main goal is to understand spiritual reality and science’s main goal is to understand physical reality, but both fields can inform the other about the nature of God.

This principle of “Conflicts are Clues” applies not just to the “First Book of God” (that is, Scripture) but also to the “Second Book of God” (that is, Creation) which is practiced by the testing and revisions of theories, but also between the Two Books. During the course of history, the study of the Two Books got separated and some of those in science rejected Scripture and some of those who were Christian rejected science, leaving conflicts unresolved as contradictions. But moving forward, this does not prevent us from considering apparent conflicts between the books as clues to be investigated further.

^[1] Bible Project “Ancient Jewish Meditation Literature” Bible Project bibleproject.com/explore/video/bible-jewish-meditation-literature-h2r/

[2] Rusbult, Craig. “How should we interpret the Two Books of God, in Scripture & Nature” American Scientific Affiliation www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/two-books.htm

[3] Bacon, Francis. “The Two Books of Francis Bacon of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human.” The First Book. Section.VI.Paragraph.16 1605

Observe

Read Psalm 19. This Psalm captures a response to what Francis Bacon called the two books of God: the Book of Creation and the Book of Scripture. How do you respond to the “two books”?